In June, New York will host the Costume Institute Gala or Met Ball, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s annual fundraising benefit. Now cited as the fashion industry’s equivalent to the Oscars and with Anna Wintour overseeing the guestlist, the event is probably the most exclusive celeb fest in the Western hemisphere.
It’s seen Rihanna wear that yellow dress which launched a thousand memes, Sarah Jessica Parker don that odd fire-like headpiece and (which also launched a fair few memes) and countless other couture-clad celebrities take to the red carpet. Today, the British Fashion Council unveils its answer to the event: a new and improved take on the British Fashion Awards called the Global Fashion Awards.
“We aspire to create an event that is like a mix of the Academy Awards and the Met Ball, on a global scale," Dame Natalie Massenet, chairman of the BFC, says in an interview with Business of Fashion. “It’s going to be the most sweeping, beautiful, magical, sparkly, twinkly, elegant red carpet you’ve ever seen.”
Scheduled to take place on December 5, the Global Fashion Awards will be staged at the Royal Albert Hall in London. The venue has a capacity of over 3,000 people and one of them (if you have the cash) could be you. “The special thing about this event is that it’s also open to the public for purchasing of tickets,” explains Nadja Swarovski of Swarovski, which is partnering with the BFC.
Like the Met Ball, the Global Fashion Awards will serve as a fundraiser – but instead of going to a museum, the proceeds will go to the BFC’s Education Foundation, which helps young people attend fashion college. Why? Because renowned fashion critic Sarah Mower issued a stark warning to Massenet: that the industry had a “potential crisis on its hands” and that “people like an Alexander McQueen, who had a scholarship to go to school, will not emerge and that that we will lose some of the diversity, some of the left-field thinking, the anti-establishment that the fashion industry craves and needs,” says Massenet, recalling Mower’s words. This is a crisis the Global Fashion Awards aims to tackle head on.
Read more about the Global Fashion Awards here.
